Yesterday’s announcement of the PlayStation 4 had everything you’d expect: a mix of hard facts and hype: perhaps more of the latter than the former, given that we don’t yet have a price, release date – or even a clear idea of what the new console will look like.

But for a glimpse of the PS4’s graphical capabilities, you have to turn to the game demos.

A lot of ports and sequels…
Most of the titles announced at the launch event were ports (Diablo 3) or part of existing franchises (inFamous Second Son, Killzone Shadowfall), but more interesting was the original IP.

Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono took to the stage to talk about Capcom’s upcoming Deep Down and the Panta Rhei technology that powers it – probably the first game engine named after a concept in philosophy.

…but some interesting new IP
More impressive is the Deep Down footage itself. The facial animation is nice, if a bit Uncanny around the eyes, and there are plenty of dynamic lighting and particle effects.

But what really caught our attention are the environments: check out the mud and puddles on the floor and the subsurface scattering on the icicles that hove conveniently into view at 0:35.

Cynics have been quick to label the clip pre-rendered footage with “pasted-on HUD elements”, which wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened at a console launch.

Guess we’ll just have to wait until “holidays 2013”, when the PS4 actually arrives, to find out.

I don’t understand why some people have trouble believing that this type of visuals are possible on the new hardware. The only game that has fully utilized dx11 features is Crysis 3, and its been proven to deliver amazing visuals, at times on par with what we have seen at the ps4 presentation, and at times better. This is more than possible.

Optimization is what helps the consoles keep up with the changing gaming world. Even the ps3 and xbox 360 are doing things that shouldn’t be possible in the hardware this consoles have, so simply imagine what they could do with hardware that is more up to date.

PC is always gonna be ahead, This year, Nvidia and AMD are releasing new hardware, and older hardware is already ahead of the PS4 capabilities, but like I said, They could never reach the level of optimization they could get on consoles on PC, so its safe to say that this new console is gonna keep up at least for a year after released with PC graphics, and if it doesn’t than it’s still a great improvement over ps3, and people with families, and responsibilities that don’t have the opportunity to keep upgrading their PC every year can get current gen graphics at cheaper a price and get an upgrade in 5 to 6 years time when the next nextgen console comes out.